When Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina gave what has become a ritualistically familiar part of American politics — the news conference on marital infidelity — there was no dutiful political wife to share the spotlight and, by her very presence, imply forgiveness.

Jenny Sanford, the first lady of South Carolina, left her husband alone to burble at length about his yearlong affair with a woman from Argentina. Instead Mrs. Sanford released a statement that was hard hitting and to the point: she said she wanted her marriage to continue but demanded nothing less, as her price, than her husband’s “repentance.” On Friday, she told reporters she had known of the affair since January but had waited for her children’s school year to end before separating from him.

For thousands of women, responding on the Internet and Twitter, Mrs. Sanford’s decision to hold her husband accountable provided a catharsis, a kind of public exorcism of the ghosts of political wives past.

Meryl B. Koopersmith, a couples therapist with the Ackerman Institute for the Family in Manhattan, felt similarly pleased with Mrs. Sanford. “You see all kinds of reactions to affairs in families,” Ms. Koopersmith said, “but very few who stand there stoically. Then these political wives, they are a different breed, almost semiconscious. I am all for the wife who doesn’t stand there like some puppet.”

In a weird reversal of public morality, the behavior of political wives often gets more scrutiny than their husbands.

Few could forget Hillary Rodham Clinton’s sitting next to her husband, Bill Clinton, as he acknowledged to “60 Minutes” that he had caused pain in his marriage; or Dina Matos McGreevey, looking half dazed as Jim McGreevey detailed a homosexual affair and resigned the governorship of New Jersey; or Silda Wall Spitzer, posing just behind Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York as he discussed hiring expensive call girls, her jaws clenched so tight that she could have cracked steel bars.

Of course, Mrs. Sanford is hardly throwing the governor out for good. She has said she is open to reconciliation.

Still, for many women, this apparent softening did nothing to diminish her dignity. Cristina Nehring, the author of “A Vindication of Love,” a new book that argues that cynicism and pragmatism have corrupted American marriages — which, she says, should be more about true passionate love — called Mrs. Sanford’s performance “impressive” all the way around.

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“Power to her for letting the governor face his critics on his own — and power to her, also, for allowing him, after he has done as much, to gain a second chance to redeem his love for her,” Ms. Nehring said.

Speaking to the same issue, Stephanie Coontz, a professor of family studies and author of “Marriage: A History,” said she found Mrs. Sanford’s reaction “more authentic” than that of most other political wives.

“She is saying she wants the marriage to survive but I am not coming out to humiliate myself in public for it,” Ms. Coontz said.

In perhaps a more cynical view of the situation, Kathleen Deveny of Newsweek wrote in an online column that at the least Mrs. Sanford, a former Wall Street executive who has managed her husband’s campaigns, had “deftly transformed her public humiliation into a weapon — and beat her cheating husband about the head with it.”

After watching the news conference, Ms. Deveny said of Mrs. Sanford, “I realized that I was in the presence of a media genius.”

Whether the Sanford marriage can really be saved is another story. Many therapists said the bar for forgiveness might be higher than the Spitzers or the Clintons had to clear, because in this case Mr. Sanford appeared to really love the other woman.

“If we assume the relationship is genuine on Sanford’s part, that is much more threatening to a marriage than just sex,” said Catherine J. Ross, a law professor at George Washington University and co-author of a textbook on contemporary family law.

Judith Wallerstein, the author of “The Good Marriage” and “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce,” says surveys of couples show that both partners say they would rather their spouse cheated anonymously than had a love affair.

“They say, ‘If it were a roll in the hay, it wouldn’t hurt me. I wouldn’t give up the marriage. But if it were a love affair, I am out of there,’ ” Dr. Wallerstein said.

But women observing the folly said a husband’s love of his mistress was not all bad.

“I would far rather have a husband who is capable of love, motivated by love, derailed by love than a husband who is motivated exclusively by meaningless and sordid sex,” Ms. Nehring said. “The one is redeemable; the other an emotional invalid.”

Carol Pogash and Malia Wollan contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Political Wife’s Hard Line Strikes Chord. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe